Google Home, and Assistant speakers in general, have only been on the scene a fraction of the time that the Amazon Echo family has. However, Google’s devices are starting to pick up steam, and they’ve really made themselves known in the market…

Google and Amazon discounted their smart speakers so deeply in the holiday sales that they likely lost money on each unit, say analysts. Amazon discounted its Echo Dot to $29.99 in the run-up to the holidays, with the Google Home Mini also seen for the same price in various sales.

The two companies’ willingness to lose money on the hardware reveals their very different strategy to Apple with its upcoming HomePod speaker …

When Google Home launched, Amazon’s Alexa platform had a massive headstart in several areas. About a year later, though, I think it’s safe to say Google has turned the tables. Now, Alexa is catching up with Home, and today it’s brought over one of Home’s best new features — multi-user support.

As we approach the holiday season, we expect to hear about new products that will hit the market in time for buyers to snatch them for themselves or loved ones. Before today, we knew for sure that Google had plans to introduce the Home Mini at next week’s event. What we didn’t expect was for Amazon to announced an entire line of new Echo products. And on top of that, we exclusively reported that Google had plans to introduce a premium Home called the ‘Max’ (although we don’t know if that’s coming before the end of the year).

This holiday season, do you plan to buy any new Google Home or Amazon Echo products?